Unzipped by Lois Greiman Page B

spit in his eye. “I’m a psychologist, Mr. Rover. Remember?”
    “Didn’t you think it rather odd that a tight end for the Lions would keep a diary, Ms. McMullen?”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    “Because he was such a sensitive soul?”
    I pursed my lips and counted to ten. “I had no reason to believe he was anything other than what he said.”
    “Do you consider yourself naïve, Ms. McMullen?”
    “Listen.” My temper was rising again, which sucked, because El Charro was way across town and I always craved Mexican when my ire was up. “I’m not a criminal. Neither am I customarily in the company of criminals.” I gave him the evil eye I’d inherited from my mother and honed in a cheap-ass bar four blocks from where I grew up. “He hired me as his psychoanalyst. I psychoanalyzed. Second-guessing his every sentence would have made it impossible to help him.”
    “Maybe if you had questioned his statements instead of believing every half-assed lie, he’d still be alive instead of having his brains sucked out of his nose as we speak.”
    The image made me feel a little queasy, but since that was probably his intent, I continued on. “Projecting responsibility, Raver?”
    “What’s that?”
    “The tendency to place your shortcomings on someone else. We call it projecting responsibility.”
    He leaned closer. I could feel the heat of his body. “Just what shortcomings are you referring to, Ms. McMullen?”
    The oxygen was being sucked slowly out of my lungs. I leaned back. “I just meant—”
    “Where’s the damned diary?”
    And suddenly everything was clear. I cocked my head to the side, granting myself a better view of his dark features. This was a moment I’d want to enjoy later, possibly while my cell mate etched her name into my biceps. “Let me get this straight,” I said, savoring the words. “Did you come here to ask for my help?”
    He shifted his gaze away from me for a moment, then looked back and smiled. “You have a rich imagination, Ms. McMullen.”
    “Ask nice,” I suggested.
    “I came here,” he said, eyeing me cockily, “to find out if you have any kind of
logical
reason to believe there is a diary.”
    I laughed. I couldn’t help it. And for a moment I actually wondered if he might reach out and throttle me. “Am I correct in assuming,
Lieutenant
, that despite your best efforts, you have been unable to locate Mr. Bomstad’s journal?”
    “If there was a damned journal, we would have found it by now.”
    “Oh, there’s a journal,” I assured him.
    “What makes you think so?”
    “Because I’m a professional.” And I had seen Bomstad’s face when he spoke about it. He’d kept a diary, but I was beginning to believe it might not be filled with the kind of heart-wrenchingly sensitive prose I had originally expected.
    “A professional,” Rivera said and laughed. The sound made me want to shove a tube sock up his nose. It also made me hope to hell I was right. I turned away.
    He caught my arm just above the elbow and I froze. I’d like to say I was affronted by his rudeness. But I hadn’t been touched by a man since Dr. David’s hug some days before, and the idea that my favorite mentor was engaged to Princess Di was still wearing at me a little.
    Our eyes met. Something like lightning stroked my belly. I knew better than to fall for another cretin, but Rivera was looking at me with those smoldering eyes, and if I was the kind of girl to believe in chemistry, I’d have said there were enough sparks to explode the damned laboratory just about then. He was made of that lean, tight material that made my saliva glands go all goofy. But then he spoke.
    “Withholding evidence is a federal offense, Ms. McMullen.”
    I gritted a smile and remembered why I hated him. “I don’t know where Mr. Bomstad kept his diary,” I said, “but then, I don’t have a task force and access to his living quarters, do I?”
    He tightened his grip on my arm. “And if you